Greedy Goblin

Monday, February 11, 2013

Happy birthday to me

1 year ago I started playing EVE Online.

As in EVE you gain skillpoints by real time, character age is an important factor in power. Therefore in EVE a few months old player is considered a newbie while an average game takes less time than this to complete and forget. In EVE you can't farm skillpoints by active play, you can only increase the acquisition rate by clever remaps and implants. You can also have more than one accounts specialized in different tasks. Luckily the official RMT of EVE is trading game time for game currency. If you are good in the game, you can get your play funded by less successful players. Thanks to this, I pay-by-PLEX for 12 accounts.

5 of them are supercarrier pilots in training, I intend to sell them as a passive income. Trading characters are legal in EVE, as long as it's done for game currency. One account is played by my girlfriend who is mainly playing WoW but spends some time in EVE and I hope she eventually switches to EVE. Now let's see my own 6 accounts:

Gevlon Goblin, my "main". This pilot earns the most money and does what I - as a player - identify with: trading. Like most newbies, I managed to spend both bonus remaps, but luckily they weren't that bad. The reason why Gevlon has so many skillpoints in Spaceship Command is that I learned all of them in a P/W remap and I don't see learning any more. You can see lack of gunnery, missiles, drones, because Gevlon doesn't fly combat ships, but freighter, Orca, transport Tengu. I will never leave the best corporation of EVE: the NPC corp. Besides trading and hauling I can research blueprints and now learning for manufacturig/refining.

15.0M SP, +5 implants, 8 Int, 6 M, remap up in 2 weeks

Hek trader: she got much less attention than Gevlon, she just traded in Hek and lacks the ability to undock practically anything. Now that the important skills on this account are completed, she'll learn to fly a covops frig and train the needed skills for researching blueprints.
2.9M SP, +3 implants, 10 Int, 8 M, 1 bonus remap

Cindy Sasen: scout and covops pilot, one of those who took part in my nullsec adventure. Now mostly out of work, so got skillpoints for blueprint research and spends her time in a lowsec research station.
3.9M SP, +4 implants, 10 Int, 8 M, 1 bonus remap

There are 3 pilots on this account, who are more or less clones: Amarr, Dodixie and Rens trader. They all have trading skills and good standings with their home stations. 2 already can, 1 will be able to research blueprints. 1 can, 2 will be able to fly cloaked. 1 can, 2 will have manufacturing ability. None of them can, but all of them will be able to fly freighter and Orca. On this front the latest devblog made some mess. Learning an Orca will be much easier after the summer expansion while learning a freighter will be harder, as it replaces the useful Racial industrial 5 (covops hauler) with the useless Advanced spaceship command 5 skills. So I have to turn their plans upside down, learn freighters now, wait with Orca. They will all have transport Tengus too, so there is filler for waiting. Their future is clear: they will live in their hubs, trade, research, maybe manufacture. One of them has near-perfect planet skills to practice PI.

5.9M, 4.6M, 8.4M SP, +4 implants all

This account is the home of Titania Goblin, the other char involved in my nullsec visit. She flied logi during the capture of three regions, took part in the largest supercapital battle of 2012 and trains for carriers. Which will have to wait of course since the new skill system will make that easier. Her future is currently blurry as I don't know when will I return to null. I learned that as long as it's a money sink and people are there altruistically, "for fun", I have no place there. So she'll only fly again if nullsec industry will be fixed and there will be economic incentive to live in null.

16.4M SP, +5 implants, 10 Perc, 4 Will, 1 bonus remap

While she's waiting, a new character took residence in this account: Botslayer Goblin, the busy Knight of the New Order. There are way too many morons and slackers polluting highsec in their untanked mining barges. They refuse to put on tank or use Skiff because of their yield. This is exactly as smart as ratting with a supercarrier: sure, it's the best ISK/hour way of ratting, but it won't last long. The skill queue now includes various gunnery 5s to increase the current 620 DPS a bit. After their completion I will learn Destroyers and battlecruiser 5 with cruiser 3 for all races to get the free skillpoints. I will fly a Talos soon to handle the harder nuts that a Catalyst can't break.

2.7M SP, +3 implants, 10 Perc, 4 Will, 1 bonus remap

Rorka Goblin, my original nullsec industrialist, who is now the trader and scout for the New Order. Rorka is in Cha/Will remap, learning mining boosting and trading skills. He is mostly flying an Orca that I learned in this remap because needed it now: it carries the gank equipment needed, so Botslayer doesn't have to take gates. Rorka also flies a Procurer to scout. My dreams of nullsec industry aren't dead, but they are indeed foggy.

15.2M SP, +5 implants, 10 Cha, 4 Will, 1 bonus remap

Ragnarok pilot. The weirdest of my characters and the one I refused to change after my nullsec journey ended. He keeps learning and will have a gunless Ragnarok titan some day. Currently in Cha/Will remap, maxing out all the fleet booster skills except mining. The Int part is over, including JDC5. While it is maybe foolish to stick to this plan, I can afford it. And I can definitely not buy such pilot on the bazaar if the tide turns.

15.2M SP, +5 implants, 10 Cha, 4 Will, 1 bonus remap

The first pilot on this account was learning for a Moros dreadnought and progressed pretty well, was the first to complete his training.

13.5M SP, +5 implants, 10 Perc, 4 Will, 1 bonus remap

However as my focus changed, a newcomer arrived to this account: Botmuncher Goblin, a secondary ganker. No, I'm not planning to do dualbox-gank, I just want to skip waiting for GCC. He will only learn Catalyst skills, no point or need to climb higher.

What did I do during this year? Mostly this:

(the measured quantity is billion ISK gained due trading. It would be my asset if I wouldn't spend on various non-trading projects)

How did I celebrate this event? By destroying AFK-ers and bots! I created a new warehouse in Mesybier and devastated the surroundings.

9 comments:

Anonymous
said...

What's your reasoning behind continuing to train characters when you can afford to purchase a character instead. Sure seems like a waste of time if you are just waiting around on those chars until they have the skills you need.

Given you need to plex your super-carrier pilots in order to train them (seeing as "ghost training" was long ago nerfed)

a) how long do you expect to take to train them?b) how much do you need to earn off each to break even on the plex invested?

12 months worth of game time at half a billion isk a month is 6 billion/year and I'd imagine a solid supercap pilot would take more than that to be worthy of sale? Do you have a feel for the break even and margins on this?